Shah: In defense of smart foreign assistance

This week more than 2,000 government, civil society and private sector leaders have gathered in Busan, South Korea with one goal: to improve the quality and effectiveness of development aid.

The setting is especially significant; 50 years ago, South Korea was largely a country of peasant farmers. It was poorer than two-thirds of the countries in sub-Saharan Africa and its people barely lived past the age of 54.

Today, South Korea is a high-tech hub, a net donor and its people have some of the longest life expectancies in the world. South Korea also happens to be the seventh largest market for American goods; we sell more to the South Koreans than we do to the French. The free trade agreement President Obama recently signed with South Korea means we’ll be selling even more to Seoul in the future, leading to high-paying American jobs.

South Korea’s economic miracle – from one of the poorest countries in the world to one of the wealthiest – serves as a powerful example of how effective foreign assistance can be, if delivered well and used wisely to catalyze growth. With a focus on transparency, mutual accountability, strong private sector engagement and meaningful results, development assistance can help developing countries thrive.

President Obama, Secretary Clinton and I have worked hard to reform the way America delivers assistance abroad. As part of our nation’s first ever Presidential policy on development, we’ve made our assistance more transparent, accountable and effective.

We created foreignassistance.gov – an online dashboard that anyone can use to track American foreign assistance investments. We launched a major effort to deliver our aid directly to the people we intend to help, rather than routing it through middlemen and contractors. And we launched the Open Government Partnership, a new multilateral initiative through which governments – including the U.S. – make concrete commitments to promote transparency, empower citizens, fight corruption and use new technologies to strengthen governance.

But America will do even more to ensure our development assistance is delivered transparently and accountably. Yesterday in Busan, Secretary Clinton announced a major step forward for development transparency: the United States – the world’s largest donor of foreign assistance – will join the International Aid Transparency Initiative. This international standard of data reporting demands that we provide our taxpayers and our partners data about our investments in a clear, accurate and timely manner.

From keeping the development pledges we made at the Gleneagles donor summit, to delivering major reforms to our aid through an effort called USAID Forward, to launching a global food security initiative called Feed the Future that will lift 18 million people out of hunger and poverty, the United States has shown its commitment to be a modern, global leader in international development.

But delivering effective aid is a two-way street – it also requires leadership from our partners. That’s why we will also strengthen our partnerships with foreign governments that show commitments to economic reform and democratic governance.

President Obama also launched an effort called Partnerships for Growth emphasizing that American engagement – if matched by mutual commitments by partner governments – could help catalyze growth in countries best positioned for economic success. We’ve worked in close partnership with the governments of El Salvador, the Philippines, Tanzania and Ghana to conduct joint analyses of their constraints to growth and develop joint action plans to help break them down.

Finally, we will expand our partnership with the private sector, as part of our continuing and sustained efforts to make American taxpayer dollars go further. A cornerstone of this effort is forming new, high impact public-private partnerships – working and investing together to build new markets, unlock opportunity and deliver meaningful results. We must support the work of markets that can deliver profits, create jobs and deliver economic opportunity for women, minorities and the poor.

But ultimately, we are in Busan to listen and learn. The U.S. continues to reform our development work to strengthen our impact and bring real and tangible benefits to the poorest around the world. But we also look to our development partners to help us improve our ability to deliver results. South Korea’s experience has taught us much about effective foreign aid. But we have just as much to learn from the rest of the world.

4 Comments

A very interesting and promising article. It is really important that people can see what foreign aid their governments are giving and what effects it has. As someone that works for a small UK based charity that is promoting a sustainable system of agriculture that could lift millions of tropical farmers out of poverty and save millions of acres of tropical forests, I would be very interested in starting a dialogue with someone from USaid. We currently have projects in Honduras and the Cameroons but are seeking a major donor to enable our partners to disseminate the system widely. The agricultural technique called Inga Alley Cropping could replace unsustainable slash and burn agriculture in many parts of the tropical world, providing farmers with better, more secure livelihoods. As it retains the nutrients in the soil and allows the farmer to continue farming on the same plot, the farmer no longer needs to burn new areas of rainforest every two or three years as he is forced to do with slash and burn agriculture. Thus Inga Alley Cropping not only benefits the farmers but also protects the vital rainforests.
I would humbly suggest that USaid should include assistance to this vital cause as an intrinsic component of its Feed the Future initiative. Many tropical countries such as Honduras have the potential not merely to feed their own populations but also to grow and prosper by building a large sustainable farming communities that can grow food both for home and abroad. The Inga system could lift the struggling campesino farmers into a more prosperous settled community that are more able both to feed their families and to contribute to wider society. They will also become the protectors rather than the destroyers of the rainforests.
Yet to fulfill such a vision in the rainforest countries of South and Central America, Africa and Asia, funding is urgently needed so that Demonstration Farms and Inga Nurseries can be set up. We would welcome any assistance USaid is able to provide to assist us in this process. Please have a look at our web site at rainforestsaver.org to find out more about our charity and Inga Alley Cropping and we hope that when you have done so, you will want to contact us. We look forward to hearing from you.